Liam Howlett said: “The schedule is for the album to come out in June-July 2004. And it really is fuckin’ coming out this time, it’s no joke.”

The producer is also considering surprising fans by secretly releasing a new track. He explained; “I think we may put something out on a white label, and people won’t know what it is. I think people will be surprised when they hear this record. I want people to go ‘Fuck, is that Prodigy? I didn’t expect that.’ It’s different this album, it’s fuckin’ different.”

Describing the sound of the new as-yet-unnamed album in an interview with nekozine.co.uk Howlett said: “It sounds sexier! The tracks I’ve done sound like me, they sound like Prodigy, but they kind of have… they are punk in attitude, but not kind of ‘I’m gonna fuckin scream it down your throat.”

He added: “It is more beats and hard production and kind of toughness that’s on a street level.”

Prodigy have not made a studio album since 1997’s ‘The Fat Of The Land’, though Howlett released the mix record ‘The Dirtchamber Sessions Vol. 1’ in 1999 and the single ‘Baby’s Got A Temper’ emerged in 2002.

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“After ‘Baby’s Got A Temper’ for me, I was never happy with that record,” Howlett said. “I felt like, at that stage I had slipped into a formula of writing and it felt stale. But I think that in hindsight, it was definitely the last time we could write a record like that. And for me it gave me a big wake up call.”

Howlett also revealed that Prodigy began recording with controversial electro-princess Peaches; though due to her recording commitments with her second album ‘Fatherfucker’, the collaboration was abandoned.

He said of Peaches: “The vibe started good, and then it just didn’t work. I mean, I love her, she rocks it, she’s the real fuckin’ deal…”

Howlett added: “She was all stressed with her own record and she had just done the track with Iggy Pop… so she couldn’t find the time to come over and do some more work on the track.”

Further details of the details of the album are yet to be confirmed, though it has long gone under the working title of ‘Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned’.